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Evolving OpenAI's Structure

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Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#71

Post by jjani »

bhouston wrote: post #56
sz4kerto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they consider themselves to have low(er) chance of winning. They could think either, but they obviously can't say the latter.

OpenAI is winning in a similar way that Apple is winning in smartphones. OpenAI is capturing most of the value in the space (generic LLM models), even though they have competitors who are beating them on price or capabilities. I think OpenAI may be able to maintain this position at least for the medium term because of their name recognition/prominence and they are still a fast mover. I also think the US is going to b…

IE once captured all of the value in browserland, with even much higher mindshare and market dominance than OpenAI has ever had. Comparing with Apple (= physical products) is Apples to oranges (heh).

Their relationship with MS breaking down is a bad omen. I'm already seeing non-tech users who use "Copilot" because their spouse uses it at work. Barely knowing it's rebadged GPT. You think they'll switch when MS replaces the backend with e.g. Anthropic? No chance.

MS, Google and Apple and Meta have gigantic levers to pull and get the whole world to abandon OpenAI. They've barely been pulling them, but it's a matter of time. People didn't use Siri and Bixby because they were crap. Once everyone's Android has a Gemini button that's just as good as GPT (which it already is (it's better) for anything besides image generation), people are going to start pressing them. And good luck to OpenAI fighting that.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#72

Post by alasano »

esafak wrote: post #46
azinman2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless China handicaps the their progress as well (which they won’t, see made in China 2025), all you’re doing is handing the future to deepseek et al.

What kind of a future is that? If China marches towards a dystopia, why should Europe dutifully follow? We can selectively ban uses without banning the technology wholesale; e.g., nuclear power generation is permitted, while nuclear weapons are strictly controlled.

We don't know whether pushing towards AGI is marching towards a dystopia.

If it's winner takes all for the first company/nation to have AGI (presuming we can control it), then slowing down progress of any kind with regulation is a risk.

I don't think there's a good enough analogy to be made, like your nuclear power/weapons example.

The hypothetical benefits of an aligned AGI outweigh those of any other technology by orders of magnitude.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

m_krebs wrote: post #68
the_duke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

"X increased exponentially in the past, therefore it will increase exponentially in the same way in the future" is fallacious. There is nothing guaranteeing indefinite uncapped growth in capabilities of LLMs. An exponential curve and a sigmoidal curve look the same until a certain point.

Yeah, it is a pretty good bet that any real process that produces something that looks like an exponential curve over time is the early phase of a sigmoid curve, because all real processes have constraints.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#74

Post by Night_Thastus »

lanthissa wrote: post #65
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #13

I think this is one of the most interesting lines as it basically directly implies that leadership thinks this won't be a winner take all market: > Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale,…

AGI can't really be a winner take all market. The 'reward' for general intelligence is infinite as a monopoly and it accelerates productivity. Not only is there infinite incentive to compete, but theres decreasing costs to. The only world in which AGI is winner take all is a world in which it is extremely controlled to the point at which the public cant query it.

Nothing OpenAI is doing, or ever has done, has been close to AGI.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#75

Post by Kabukks »

the_duke wrote: post #58
dingnuts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me it sounds like an admission that AGI is bullshit! AGI would be so disruptive to the current economic regime that "winner takes all" barely covers it, I think. Admitting they will be in normal competition with other AI companies implies specializations and niches to compete, which means Artificial Specialized Intelligence, NOT general intelligence! and that makes complete sense if you don't have a lay person's u…

AGI is matter of when, not if. It will likely require research breakthroughs, significant hardware advancement, and anything from a few years to a few decades. But it's coming. ChatGPT was released 2.5 years ago, and look at all the crazy progress that has been made in that time. That doesn't mean that the progress has to continue, we'll probably see a stall. But AIs that are on a level with humans for many common ta…

Could you elaborate on the progress that has been made? To me, it seems only small/incremental changes are made between models with all of them still hallucinating. I can see no clear steps towards AGI.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#76

Post by slt2021 »

screamingninja wrote: post #67
bhouston wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI is winning in a similar way that Apple is winning in smartphones. OpenAI is capturing most of the value in the space (generic LLM models), even though they have competitors who are beating them on price or capabilities. I think OpenAI may be able to maintain this position at least for the medium term because of their name recognition/prominence and they are still a fast mover. I also think the US is going to b…

> ban all non-US LLM providers What do you consider an "LLM provider"? Is it a website where you interact with a language model by uploading text or images? That definition might become too broad too quickly. Hard to ban.

the bulk of money comes from enterprise users. Just need to call 500 CEOs from the S&P500 list, and enforce via "cyber data safety" enforcement via SEC or something like that.

everyone will roll over if all large public companies roll over (and they will)

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#77

Post by purpleidea »

There's really nothing "open" about this company. If they want to be, then:

(1) be transparent about exactly which data was collected for the model

(2) release all the source code

If you want to benefit humanity, then put it under a strong copyleft license with no CLA. Simple.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#78

Post by Tenoke »

For better or worse, OpenAI removing the capped structure and turning the nonprofit from AGI considerations to just philanthropy feels like the shedding of the last remnants of sanctity.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#79

Post by phreeza »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #13

I think this is one of the most interesting lines as it basically directly implies that leadership thinks this won't be a winner take all market: > Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock. This is not a sale,…

That is a very obvious thing for them to say though regardless of what they truly believe, because (a) it legitimizes removing the cap , making fundraising easier and (b) averts antitrust suspicions.

Re: Evolving OpenAI's Structure

#80

Post by elAhmo »

lolinder wrote: post #70

So the non-profit retains control but we all know that Altman controls the board of the non-profit and I'd be shocked if he won't have significant stock in the new for-profit (from TFA: "we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock"). Which means that regardless of whether the non-profit has control on paper, OpenAI is now even better structured for Sam Altman's personal enrichment. No more ca…

We have seen how much power does the board have after the firing of Altman - none.

Let's see how this plays out. PBC effectively means nothing - just take a look at Xai and its purchase of Twitter. I would love to listen reasoning explaining why this ~33 billion USD move is benefiting public.

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